


Tabu

by Radiolaria



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Episode: s06e08 Let's Kill Hitler, F/M, Graphic Description, Irreverence, Missing Scene, Sexual Content, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 20:50:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1402003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“By the end of the evening, I want you naked and spoilt anyway, so why bother to dress up, why bother to cover anything?” </i>
  <br/>
  <i>Her muscular shape is on full display against the black fabric, curves and sparks bolting his vision. She notices of course, but there is not enough blood in his face to blush. </i>
  <br/>
  <i>“Clothes are screens,” she rules, slipping on a smart pair of trousers, men’s. She doesn’t bother with a shirt. “I don’t want to hide anything.” </i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In Berlin, the Doctor runs after River, only to be met with ugliness and skins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tabu

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to [Alyssa](http://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenisalibrary) and Luisa for their precious help. Any mistake left is mine.
> 
> Imagine a banana. Not really. Simply imagine I took every single cut within the 32 minutes of Let's Kill Hitler and stretched it as much as possible to insert this sub intrigue in the middle. Technically AU. It's simply a more head-on, meatier controntation between River and the Doctor within the specific episode context. . 
> 
> Amongst the gaps I played around, must be included Amy and Rory being taken by the Teselecta. I did not approach it here for POV reasons, but if youreally want to know what happened: Amy had a hilarious verbal fencing with herself and jumped off the Motorcycle to avoid the ray, but upon realizing the ray was aimed at Rory, extended a hand and was miniaturized as well. The bang is obviously the vehicle falling on the ground without anyone to hold on to it. The scene alarmed the lobby boys and passer-by who attempted to stop the decadent-looking woman striding inside the building. Hence the delay in Teselecta!Amy’s arrival.

“I'm all yours, honey.”

One mouth, definitely. With teeth.

“Yes, you are. Dinner?”

He’s talking. Funny voice. Did something change about her ears?

“Oh, he's cheeky. Aren't you cheeky? I'm almost tempted to keep you alive ‘til I'm bored of you.”

She tilts her head, takes a step closer to him. The way the curls bounce in the periphery of her eyes is distracting. It tickles her face and, with annoyance, she realises she will have to say goodbye to the braids, indefinitely.

“I'm the Doctor -even I won't live that long.”

The distance between her eyes changed also, it’s unsettling. She hates this part; her aim is off for hours afterwards. He has a mouth like a target though. It’s an easy shot. She pecks his lips, plucking life from him. He has the stupidity to respond.

“Oh sweetie, no, you won't.”

No, _he won’t_ , she repeats herself. And she probably would not _remember_ that dinner anyhow. She wishes she could register anything about what is going on around her. Her senses are triggered by the wrong stimuli, leaving her half guessing her way around, half retreating from her surroundings. Regeneration is tricky, even in a _grown-up_ body. Where cells are _supposed_ to be in place, not still developing. She ended up with lungs of an adolescent within the ribcage of a child last time. That was messy.

She is talking, he is failing. Doesn’t even know it until now.

Nothing seems to stick around long enough for her to process and act upon. Facts, observations stack up and are check-listed, flat, but incomprehensible: he seems shocked, her parents betrayed, the weather grey.

That’s pretty much it.

“Kiss, kiss.”

Her feet crash land and she can hear more than sense the numbing pain in her limbs, before it threads up, through moans muffled. Her left heel broke. She would laugh it off but a wave of nausea backs her into the wall. And standing on her nearly relevant feet, she wiggles new bones out of the old ones in the twinkling of an eye.

Of course, she caught a pack of guards’ attention. They run to her, like magnets, guns drawn and boots clinking, a din of fanaticism in lieu of drums. Threats are made, jokes also, which are unfortunately even more unsuccessful than the threats.

They shoot her.

Not a first time, naturally. She will never get used to this, especially in the first instants after regeneration when everything is still _moving_ around. Her kidneys go unscathed only because they are in the wrong place. The rest of her insides take the full blast, but she is so high on endorphins and bio-energy it feels like a rough session of tickling.

The “no” she hears her father cry rings like a shrieking intermission bell.

For laughs, she blows the soldiers up; she is the epicentre of attention, of danger, of death.

Strike the set!

Gathering the weapons, she notices with delight the way the grips fit in her hands. Tailored for machine guns. Her clothes aren’t. She really needs to go shopping.

On her right, a gleam of light reflects on a black surface. It’s a motorcycle. She grins and heads straight for the shiny curves, hopscotching between the bodies. Or strutting down a catwalk paved with Nazis. She can’t decide.

Huffs from above hint at the impending arrival of her parents.

The leather of the saddle, still warm, between her thighs, pricks centre after centre of excitation up her spine, until she shivers. She takes off, letting her parents stranded and aghast. The Doctor probably stayed even more behind, the sweet man, cradling his death into the TARDIS, alone. A shame really. They could have cradled it together.

Her laughter roars with the engines, air beating her ears and knuckles.

It’s too tempting, for both of them, to let it end there. In Hitler’s offices. While she is seeing the worlds, _at last._

Every turn is a good direction to take, as long as she likes the look of the streets. Colours and shapes, no details yet.

She knows he is going to die in less than an hour; still, the kiss was too light, under-dosed. In her defence, the man has wide lips and she never kissed him before. A painful clatter follows her suddenly before dying and she vaguely wonders if she hit something or someone. The streets are crossed by cars and pedestrians that are only learning to avoid her path. They are not screaming yet, so she speeds up and decides to test the sidewalk solidity.

She needs to produce her own excitement. Berlin is not enough.

She has a feeling she wants to get drunk on him before he kicks the bucket.

Because, really, his lips were too delicious and she can’t bear never to touch him again. The large stain of buildings rushing out of her field of vision opens to reveal the Spree river and its strollers, ready to be traumatized. At the corner, someone tries to grab her; palm gloved, masculine, not strong enough to stop her.

The Doctor had been strong enough, nearly. Countering, snapping, smiling. She would want _him_ again.

To pinch him, to scare him, to let herself be touched by him. He put a hand on her waist. For a kiss that lasted less than a second. Rejecting her should have been the logical answer and he wasn’t exactly obliging when it came to letting himself be killed. She’d say to herself these are definitely mixed signals.

When she catches, sharp as a glass in her ears, a familiar whirring, she slows down, just a little. Out of curiosity.

She lets him find her, chasing her on his TARDIS, bawling that woman’s name and swaying dangerously above the speeding ground. She shook off her parents long ago, not fair competition. Granted, she must give credit to her father for being an interesting first-time rider. He handled his first turn well, but took an impromptu break in a back-alley afterwards. That’s one thing she is relieved she never taught him. Although, if Amy remembers any of the lessons Mels gave her on back-alleys, Rory is in for a big surprise.

Having the flying machine on her heels, chirping and twirling alongside the buildings and the river, sending people trembling to the ground, brings the worst in her. River feels like behaving like a brat with the machine on her trail, taking the sharpest turns and whistling each time the ship practically defaces a streetlight. The rush of adrenaline combined with the lingering strokes of regenerative energy whips her frame and muscles taut. Stretching and pulling her insides, making it impossible to focus on anything that is not the blood pumping in her veins.

There are streets and dangers outside, villains, games, and him. Yet she cannot bear to leave the warm, exciting, sizzling hearth that is her body right now. The air is too bright, the humidity too loud, the shouts too clear. She feels like she is leaving her nerves behind, dressing the world in her colours, in herself; imperial gold. 

He shouts, top of his lungs, barely standing against the frame of the door, shaken. The poison is already exhausting him. Well, she may offer him a last draw. She deserves a little fun and he definitely deserves a taste of hell before checking out.

Without a warning for the fleeing pedestrians or her pursuers, she puts on the brakes, screeching and skidding long the Spree banks. The passer-by and soldiers barely pay attention to her as the massive blue box whooshes just above them, taking with her all the hats, as if _demanding_ to be met with proper ceremony.

“Hello, Sweetie. I _like_ you.” River ruffles her hair, studying the box’s mad polka as she catches up, the Doctor thrown from one side to another with an anguished expression. “You can’t handle your bullet, but _bang,_ you know how to make an entrance.”

Admiring the boldness, River brings a hand to her head to salute, but is forced to duck as the bottom of the ship nearly beheads her and cripples the statue nearby. It seems the TARDIS and she are on the same page when it comes to excitement. A little pain is no pain, but turns the volume up and _now they’re talking_.

The people have all fled out of sight, leaving the street and waterside sprinkled with various hats and bags. All those colours, it’s almost pretty.

Perhaps, she could steal the TARDIS after he dies and flyoff into the sunset with her. The villain is dead, long live the Queen.

_Fairy tale ending._

She doubts he shares her views on pain or pleasure. He is, after all, not having such a good time at the moment. As the box turns to face her and lands, hovering and huffing, he reappears, grey, lips quivering. His eyes display a sharpness and an energy hardly fitting to a dying man. He is in spiffing shape and she takes a mental note to stop by the TARDIS infirmary to check on those miracle painkillers.

_I could buy myself a Spaceship reselling that stuff._

He trips out of the box, his sweaty hands squeaking on the door, leaving lustre on the wood. His shallow breath digging his chest with each step in her direction. Turned inwards to spare energy and focus strength, he is faring remarkably well. The knowledge he won’t have time to teach her such a technique saddens her for a second. He seems _organically_ stuck, side effect of the regeneration-inhibitor in the poison.

Can’t regenerate? That’s a shame. Welcome to the human condition _,_ she doesn’t say. Strange; she is not sure she is saying everything she _wants_ to say. She really should not give him a second thought, but can’t seem to get away from him. New brain connections.

Must work around them. Later.

She cackles instead, balancing on the motorcycle, while the Doctor trips unsure in her direction and stops dead in his tracks, casting a quick glance over his shoulder _._

Could he really doubt she is not mocking _him_?

Uncertainty tenses her body. She might not be as ruthless as she wants. And he is definitely not reacting the way he should to her attacks. There is something she is missing. Something huge enough for him to act out of character. Out of his character of smokes and screens. With a hand on her forearm, she brushes away her hesitations and focuses on one prospect only: fun. At his expense, if possible.

“Care for shopping?” she drawls. “I have sudden _cravings_.” The street looks like an emptied stage, with all the hats and whatnots flung around.

The Doctor shoots her a quizzical look, not of surprise, but of interest. He seems to be about to ask what sort of cravings, when she turns her back to him, and gripping the handles, fires up the engine. Backtracking, she rides past him with a cry, picking a random street, heading away from the river:

“Catch you later!”

Navigating around a city is hazardous with new eyes. Patches of building are bright red, white and black and she knows she should be a little more concerned. The thrill of having him at her feet, hanging, erases it all, and she ought to know about hung men.

After a few indistinguishable blocks of apartment, bored, she stops by the first bar she can find, in the hope of witnessing his discomfort before the turn of events she is gifting to him.

Chaos.

Deal with that, _time boy._

The colours inside are definitely darker, warmer and her throat tightens. She orders a drink under the eye of a suspicious bartender who without a doubt called the Gestapo the minute she walked in –so much flesh, so little material. She leaves the minute the glass hits the counter, as the Doctor, finally catching up with her, stumbles in breathless. The look of utter confusion she crosses on her way out prompts a good minute of laughter that burns through her palate.

Leant against her vehicle, she realises with annoyance she let go of her wisdom teeth and spits more bio-matter.

From outside, she can hear the outraged and quite vocal bartender bellowing someone should pay for the beer and the Doctor, shrill, probably justifying himself. She doesn’t have to wait long before he is on her trail again. Finding more and more to rejoice in during this little escapade, she mounts the bike, waits for him to crawl into the TARDIS and blasts the engines up, not caring much about the direction. He answers beat for beat, though the box seems to be complaining.

“So, about this dinner,” she shouts above the roaring motors, turning to him.

He is pricking his ear, she can see. For a second he disappears inside and the TARDIS catches up considerably.

“Yes. Dinner,” he yells back, bracing himself into the frame, scarecrow of hair and flapping coat. “That’s good. Let’s have dinner. You’ll need to stop for that.”

“But I haven’t got a thing to wear,” she teases, though the volume is so high it certainly qualifies as threat.

The distance is far from worrying, to be honest. She can’t imagine him plucking her from the motorbike with a fishing rod.

“This never has bothered you before.”

“True. But it did Rory.”

Hovering five feet away, he seems to have received the news of the end of the world –and be responsible for it, and ready to be punished as well as exterminated with the rest of humanity. No doubt her newly discovered kinship with the Ponds brought mental torture to a whole new level.

Wild, she barely rides for a block, before getting off and waltzing into the next shop she can find. She repeats the previous game with a butcher and a hatter and a market gardener, the shop-owners only too eager to comply after they take one look at the guns over her shoulder.

From streets to streets, chasing pedestrians like Moses fishes, they carry on their shouted conversation.

“Come on, it’s dinner! You pay people not to poison you.”

“Sorry, Sweetie, I forgot to put the kettle on. Back in a sec.”

Each time, he drags himself out of the shops too late for her, gets assaulted by the owners and scurries back to his TARDIS –with or without paying, she has to wonder.

She considers herself an expert in the man, still cannot wrap her mind completely around him.

To her great disappointment, she finds he is subject to the same margin-actions as any other human. Completely evil or good is no easy feat. There are always decisions taken that are despairingly grey. He could steal the men and spoil them, lying to himself in thinking that he had no time –when he can see she is waiting for him-, or that they were Nazis –Melody knows this is a little bit more complicated than that even if she spent History class building a weapon out of used rubber and chewed paper. Or he could pay them.

It seems so overly simple and boring. She sniffs in disdain.

During their stops-over, perched on the motorbike, one knee brought to her chest to support her chin, she sights each time the Doctor hurrying out of the shop, he looks a little rosier.

 _Good_. She’s almost making him better. That could be their little secret. She won’t hasten his fate and kill him before his death _again_ ; he lets her have her fun.

Finally, she makes a stop before a gigantic, heavy building -Hotel Adlon- humming in satisfaction as she takes note of the luxurious cars parked outside. Why go and search for a _maison de couture_ , when she can offer herself a showroom –and provide the show as well?

The TARDIS annoyingly spins before landing loudly in front of the entrance and his head pops out of the doorframe, dishevelled, but in far better state than he ought to be.

“Oi, can we stop this? I had to pay a lamb’s leg and a Bowler hat, which I really don’t know how to cook, in jelly babies and Jammy Dodgers.” He straightens his coat, dusts his lapels off, and combs back his hair, with flair, with beauty. And she killed such a _pretty_ thing. “Do you have any idea how much Jammy Dodgers that is?”

Melody is not impressed. And he pouts, his non-existent eyebrows furrowed.

“You’re right. I was probably robbed anyway.” A hand comes out of nowhere and rubs the back of his neck. The drug may have reached the brain by now. “They must be worth a fortune on the black market.”

She promptly wipes her lips with her hand, taking off most of the poison –she doesn’t know why she does it. Out of pity, probably. And she gives him a good long snog. He is taken aback; he does not even follow her when she swings both the machine guns behind her and strides into the building, determined to find new clothes.

It’s a cold, portly building, with lots of marble. Which means rich people, probably having dinner at this time of the day.

Behind her, the lobby boys are seemingly ordering the Doctor to “move your rectangle balloon, sir.”

“How can it be a balloon? It’s not even multi-coloured.” A pause. She rolls her eyes, not wanting to linger. ”And I don’t have a compass and a spyglass. Yum. Why don’t I?”

Their voices are carried in, following her, as the distinctive breathing of the hotel from another time, with maids and grooms everywhere, is beginning to surround her.

“Sir, airships are not allowed in here.”

“It’s a box travelling in time and space! Technically, it’s not even an aircraft.”

Her neck is cold, as if after a light sweat, and she wonders when she has heated up.

“You flew it right in the entrance. I will ask you to move it. Then, I will call the authority. Your haircut is most offensive.”

 _Where is the dining room?_ Damn ears. She perceives _everything_ all over again and is stuck with a model she doesn’t know how to recalibrate yet.

Smells, then?

“My hair is fine. My left lung not so much and I think I just lost my gall bladder.”

_Whiny!_

She is hot, _still_ hot. Doesn’t like it one bit. In large, draughty corridors like these, it should not be the case. It comes from her.

 “So, don’t comment about my hair, please. Sorry did you say ‘Then’? Wouldn’t it be clever to call them _first_? I mean this is a _balloon_. I could fly off and you would never find me again.”

“I thought this was a _box_. Move it.”

His lips were perfect, a little fresh, wide, talkative. He smelt of something she had never found anywhere but in her own sheets, waking in the morning, buried deep in her bed to escape the monsters and nightmares. Whatever the body, whatever the sheets. This smell.

She shakes her head, letting herself be guided by echoes of seasoned meat and wine, rather than balloons and... Oh, his silly complaints. She cannot hear them anymore. He must have gone to park the machine elsewhere.

Who knows what she might make of him later? She made it clear enough he was her toy boy for the rest of his life.  

 

***

Mumbling under his breath, he runs after her into the building.

He had no idea bio-energy could taste so good on someone’s lips.

Her fingerprints branded him where she had barely brushed, the paths recreating themselves in the fuzz of his nape.

They manage to pass the kiss without devouring each over, which is remarkable considering just how fizzy her skin is, how like melted gold. Regeneration energy kept popping around her at the most random moment. She looks like a cherry tree in spring. That’s how he tracks her round Berlin. She is insanely titillating this way. Stimulating, almost better than fish fingers and custard, if fish fingers and custard were explosive.

He swears he saw her turn magmatic the pavement she strode on.

Still, she killed him. It’s not something she could have prevented. He is the one careless enough to get killed.

 _To get him killed._ Right.

The TARDIS is safe-ish, parked inside the men’s room –the Hotel manager doesn’t need to know that. At least he can die knowing his ship will cause heart attacks to dozen of Nazis before being removed, _if_ she lets them. Not a surprise, but his running appears to be slower than his walk at the moment and the corridors designed by Daedalus. When he thinks he is completely lost, he hears machine guns and screams.

_Oh, no._

The numbness in his limbs is spurred and cleared, he feels more ruthless. She may be River and she may be Melody; he is the Doctor and he won’t let her hurt anyone but him. She would never forgive him.

He picks up a pace, cursing himself for losing so much time in trying to plant the lamb’s leg into the lobby’s decorative jungle as reprisals. His feet nearly trip on themselves as the arch reveals the dining room, emptied of guests at first glance. He slides behind the frame and assesses the situation, hidden, trying to moan as low as possible as his left little toe flickers and shuts down.

He keeps rearranging the furniture, for as long as possible. A little more blood there, less activity there. Vain efforts.

Over there, River is an exhibitionist of the worst kind.

The customers are crawling on the floor, not daring to look up, scrambling to get out of their clothes, while she is slipping off her dress, strutting with a gun in hand. Glorious.

“This interactive lesson in humiliation is brought to you by the entirety of the future human race, which probably would not have done better than you if they had been in your shoes, but never mind that.” She halts before a woman who is practically kissing the floor, so terrified she is. “No, keep those earrings. I don’t like them.”  

Off the boots in an old man’s face who loses his glasses and off the tights that flap miserably to the ground and... He shifts uncomfortably in his nook.

Much flesh at display and she finds herself in her underwear only. There are hips and shoulders he _would_ like to come closer to.

“Can’t somebody fetch me the mirror at the entrance please?”

As no one in the room moves, she points the gun toward a petite brunette clutching desperately to a violin two tables from her.

“ _You._ I saw you crouch up on the stage to retrieve your instrument. Let’s make a deal.” The Doctor winces in advance. ”I keep the violin until you come back and sit. No calling for help, no fleeing.” She displays a toothy grin, gleeful.”You get to see your violin in one piece.”

Before the violinist can squeak, River has leapt beside her and snatched the instrument from her hands, which now are opening and closing on thin air, trembling. A shrill, brief noise escapes River’s lips and the Doctor realises she is positively ecstatic.

The machine gun dangling between her legs, apart, is suddenly lifted and stroked against the violin in a slow, dangerous movement.

“That doesn’t mean I can’t make a nice, neat hole in it. Hurry.”

The woman jumps to her feet and performs a disturbing salute, clicking her heels and bowing her head. She then attempts a dignify U-turn and walks carefully, arms across her exposed chest and thighs, before River clucks her tongue and the woman clumsily rushes toward the stand mirror.

River lets out a long, satisfied sigh and sets to lounge on a table, going through the rags a lean woman hurriedly half folded, half threw there.

All eyes are glued to her now, as she passes on what seems like a cocktail dress. Red-ish. It must have a more dignify name than red-ish. Something, something like a country or a region, in Europe. Or wine. He hates wine.

At the bridge of his nose, between his eyes, the sum of hundreds of little pains and vital mishaps is beginning to conglomerate into a headache.

Violin woman struggles to keep the glass from balancing, dragging it across the room while still failing to cover her dignity and the Doctor creeps out of the corridor to give her a hand, startling her.

“Nice of you to join the fun.”

River is not bothering to look back at him, busy admiring her shape. The light on her is dangerously sharp, rendering her every curve and wrinkle accurate, precise, staged.

Appalled and very red-handed, he freezes in the middle of the room, letting the woman complete the journey on her own and set the mirror in front of River. She blinks, catching briefly his reflection in the mirror and lets him come closer, one step, under the scrutiny of the restaurant.

The woman grasps the violin River throws at her without a glance and sinks back to the shuddering crowd; she manages to look offended and the Doctor represses a smile.

Indomitable humans.

In front of the mirror, River is captivated by her reflection, turning, feeling her shape. The cocktail dress is swiftly replaced by a cream tent, by the looks of it, which causes River to chuckle.

On the way out, her curls catch in the fabric, leaving for a brief moment her bust stretched and exposed like a marble as she struggles, headless, armless. Antique.   

The ring, deliberately carved in human bodies and pride, leaves them not exactly facing each other. She is looking at his face in the mirror; he is studying her new clavicles, free of scars and tension.

They seem yards away from each other.

“Not my kind of party, sorry,” he croaks at last. The feeble smile stretches his dried lips. “We always dress up, River. And we arrive dressed up.” _No battledress_. He observes, motionless.

“Ah, but you lose so much time that way,” she retorts, holding against her chest a boring black uniform. Her behind is round, obvious, soft.

His torpid calf prevents him from kicking himself. 

He is not used to seeing her preparing herself; she always chooses exactly in what attire she greets her guests, friends and enemies.

“Not lost time.” He stands his ground.

“Yes, it is. By the end of the evening, I want you naked and spoilt anyway, so why bother to dress up, why bother to cover anything?”

Her muscular shape is on full display against the black fabric, curves and sparks bolting his vision. She notices of course, but there is not enough blood in his face to blush.

“Clothes are screens,” she rules, slipping on a smart pair of trousers, men’s. She doesn’t bother with a shirt. “I _don’t_ want to hide anything.”

She saunters about the room, picking different clothing items –he glimpses a swastika and whimpers-, perches on a stool, not paying attention to him, to the customers crying and shrivelling on sight, to how ugly it all looks. Her, this stupid, primal disinterest in everything. Not River at all.

He has half a mind to look away, but his ribs find his hearts. And it’s not the poison.

 _This_ is where she learnt to hide the damage whatever the cost; where he told her they always dress up for one another.

Because there is this _blatant_ lust for blood –balancing on her two-legged stool, she shoots glasses on the tables like fair ducks, the shards flying on the floor, where the customers are crawling. He winces at the sight of blood.

She throws her head back and flings the machine guns across the tables, making the whole assembly gasp in horror while he brutally curls up.

“No!” The people cries with him.

The weapons don’t fire, naturally obedient dogs and she tsks, dusting off the black slacks, removing a piece of glass from her bare stomach.

Her eyes are bored; he could hate her, right now. She is careless even in her evil doing. No ambition or purpose whatsoever. Just pure in evil.

He must have loved her a great deal to forgive her.

“River, I need to talk to you.” His voice is foreign, only because he feels he has to descend so deep into ugliness to find her.

“Ooooh.” She spins on her pretty bare feet and he nearly cries at the perfect newness of her toes. She is drinking from a flute, waltzes up the stage and holds the hem of an invisible dress.”This is shockingly flawed. _You_ don’t talk to me, see? Do you know what they called you? Perjurer.” She sweeps down the stairs, ruthless, and the hostages brave enough to look up show genuine concern for her sanity.

Her vanity is nil, ugly corners and shallow impatience uncovered. It’s not a pretty display.

“They could have called you liar, simply.” She shrugs and, with a bounce, skips the last step to grasp a bracelet on the nearest table. “Well, show me your bag of tricks. Come on _, talk._ Stop me. _Ah_ , a bit late. I killed you.”

She shamelessly ogles him, admiring her handiwork while chewing her lower lip, circling him plainly, from afar, between tables and bodies grovelling. His arse brushes heads in passing. The trousers are discarded, gradually, slid down her hips, and thighs, and calves. And when they hit the ground, he notices with guilty irritation she covered her chest with a waistcoat in the meantime.

For once, pretences lay on the floor amidst guises of all sorts, furs and leathers, slaughtered. He’s never seen her this unkempt and gloriously naked. Briefly, he understands her guilt and masks of later. The trenches on her face after he asked about the man she killed. The fists and jaw clenched. The spoilers and lies were a lesser evil. His death when he meant nothing to her, her great shame.

His frame hunches involuntarily, taking the hit from within; they share even that absurd condition to live.

_Your death when you are nothing to me._

She makes one small group part for her to reach a coat, pushing them like a herd of sheep.

How relieved he feels, guilty nevertheless: he would not have her a saint as well as a martyr.

“You’re pretty,” she calls softly, out of the blue, and he nearly recoils in shock.

She came forth, now clad in a man’s shirt, ridiculously long and hugging around the chest, trouser-less. A hank of hair loosely tickles her forehead and achingly, presently, she _looks_ like River.

“Please come closer. I don’t _bite_.”

Except she does. The vowels, the punctuations, even the shape of things to come. She seems to imply biting is too menial for her. She doesn’t sound like River.

He doesn’t motion in her direction and a peeved expression passes her features, changing into hostility in a flash.

“I am genuinely intrigued by what you are going to do next, Sweetie.” She hisses the ‘s’ and draws the ‘e’ as if she is cutting through tender meat, with a vein snapping on the ‘t’ at the end.

“You don’t want to play. You seem to have misplaced your companions.” Theatrical pause. “Oh, right. They were after me. You went after me. And no one cared about the two clueless English people on a motorcycle loose in Berlin. My parents!“ She puts on an outraged face, tossing on the side a cluttering piece of jewellery he has no endurance to identify. “Do you think they crashed by now, wrong side of the tracks and all?”

He shakes his head, astounded, almost smiling.

She’s a weapon of mass destruction, right in the heart of Berlin. He knows she needs very little to rewrite history in its entirety. He cannot be sure she will not take over Germany, proclaim herself new Kaiserin, invade Britain.

And yet, she cares about her parents.

“You survived.”

“I never drive on the right side of the tracks.”

She doesn’t intend to last the night, he understands.

Her life up to that point has been mostly cared for, monitored rather. Still, her captors had let her make all the mistakes. If Mels was anything to go by; steal a car, carry a gun, not the first time. And if her reflexes are so deadly, it’s only because she had practice. Chances were they always cleaned up behind her, ensured she would not be locked up for good before her time. They would not plan to bother with her after she served her purpose. She is completely alone in front of her guilt and doesn’t know it yet.

Her whole life has been built around his destruction. All the weapons they provided her with to tackle life are only good for this – killing. Without a target, she’ll blast everything near, burning herself. She doesn’t care. No need to learn of survival when you come with a reset button.

She’ll die and change her face within a day.

Berlin, 1938, she doesn’t know how to operate the TARDIS, who probably hates her by now. They busted open Hitler’s office. Which means she’s going to have the whole Gestapo on her heels. If they catch her, how long before they discover this fascinating regeneration trick of hers?

They are going to lace her open and leave her brain and hearts a field of shambles.

Immortality on the tip of their fingers. The opportunity might never present itself again. A lab rat at last, when she started her life as a human piece of engineering.

He swallows hard.

He does that a lot now that he is dying, that she is practically naked, that he is about to plead for people who are probably Nazis.

“River…”

She cuts him off with a bark, swinging her naked legs on both sides of a chair.

“ _River!_ Would you be so kind as to leave this little pet of yours out of this? Do you have to rain on my parade the way you do? I have waited long for this, _so long_.”

She lifts her head, arms flung over the back of the chair, sententious. It rings like an accusation, as if she blames her long life on him. He can understand of course: time coursing through her veins, she was exposed to starvation in a world still and slow. She had to wait for him, to grow up, even degenerate if her claims about waking up a toddler in New York are believable. Perhaps, she’s more patient than he could ever dream of becoming.

“Will you let them go?”

“I need an audience.”

She throws her head back, gripping the seat, and opens her chest to the ceiling, collarbones like spurs, neck strong and tense. Constantly in motion, performing. The tip of her toes is wandering aimlessly between the furs and uniforms on the floor. She caresses the fabric with her soles, a quick glance at him proof of her assurance to be watched.

“Voyeurism is a kink of mine. Not yours?”

She springs from the chair, with a practiced grace, her hands now reproducing the dance her feet had performed. On all fours, loitering, supple. He’d expect a purr. Instead, she extracts a fob watch from the pocket, assesses its damage and with a pin and clever fingers only, restarts it.

“Or is it bestiality? With Nazis, one can never know.”

It’s like watching a stagehand pulling down all the levers to dismantle the set. She tosses the watch on a plate and gathers in her arms more clothes. Assessing, checking, filing. But with the intent, thoroughly, un-River-like, to strike a pause.

“Oh. This one actually peed himself.” She cackles, plucking a pair of dark trousers and sits up. “I scared a Nazi. This is a good first day of life.”

He glances at the shuddering mess of people on the floor not to have to close his eyes in front of her.

“You had an audience for the most interesting part of the show. Let them go,” he breathes.

River bounces to her feet, and begins spinning while removing the shirt with one hand. Her next choice of clothing flapping on her arm, black flag. She stops, impertinent, and considers his request with attention before sighing. The dark lacy dress put on, she leans against the nearest table and crosses her arms.

“If I let them go, will you come closer?”

 _Oh_.

She won’t do it by herself.

That’s good. Probably. Not completely probably good but he might be onto something.

He steps towards her and she lifts a wrist to the flock of customers quivering on her right.

“Party’s over. Go and have a walk, you lot. I hear Berlin is such a lovely place this time of the year.”

They scramble to their feet, half whispering, half crying and River hushes them, inspecting her jaw with a thumb.

She can’t keep her hand off herself.

“Pst! Silence backstage. Shooting in progress“ She tilts her head to the side.”I don’t want to hear a scream before you pass the hall. Kapiert? “ 

The moment the Doctor takes one more step in her direction, carefully waiting for the first batch to leave the room, she flicks her left wrist at those remaining. They get up in silence, scampering off.

River looks immensely proud of herself.

“A little privacy,” she sniggers. “It’s _nearly_ as fun.”

He takes the last steps to her, sitting on the table besides her, at arm’s length. Shoulders hunched, she studies him from below her lids. As swiftly as his condition permits him, he tilts his neck in her direction, inhaling briefly a blend of all the perfumes the customers wore.

“You have no hostage left,” he pants, sounding sorry.

“I have one,” she corrects, nonplussed.

In her right hand there is something pointy and shiny. For half a second, he is ashamed to admit he fears she will leap and go for his throat. She moves fast. There is a loud clack and a crunch. The drape on the table between them is turning red.

She impaled her hand on the wood.

He surges forward, gasping, his hands hovering between the fork handle and the table, not knowing where to pull to free her.

“What have you done?” His voice is a wailing squeak.

River frowns.

“Ah. There. I knew there was something. You are _worried_ about me.” A pout appears on her lips. “That’s something I could have used. More interesting than getting you all hot.” She sits up, shifts on the table, closer to her hand and him, curious. “Afraid I damage this body? I like it too much to touch it. For now. Unless you want to test it?”

An evident shiver of pleasure courses under her skin and he forgets to breathe. “I’ve heard the stories. You can be a mean little thing when you want it. What you can’t save, you…” She trails off. Bile scorches his throat, while he tries to keep at bay the memories of Sutekh, the Vervoids, the Family, Rosanna. “Doesn’t matter now, does it? Or will I get an extra treat and be _saved_ by the Doctor?”

She pauses, expression mirror to her words.

“Boring! Seriously, do people really thank you for _saving_ them? _”_

Carcass waiting to burst open with worms, she is.

A fear, genuine and grounded, suddenly grabs him whispering that time was rewritten in some manner and that River might never be born in Berlin today. How can he tell if this is not River? How can he himself become what she needs him to be now? His affection for her might not survive herself, her frenzy, her ugliness. Not because she could hurt him, but because she might do something she will blame herself a great deal for in the future.

She is already doing it.

He panics. Either his brain is shutting out or he is losing heart. He cannot be the one to fail her.

A crude pang tears his chest open and he stumbles away from her cold –curious, again, it’s strange- gaze. He catches himself on a chair, gritting teeth, bracing himself for the next peek of pain, instead finding the softness of a fabric under his hand.

It’s a negligee, dark, with pink flowers.

And oddly familiar.

He seems to recall he saw it the first time he accidentally stepped into her room and witnessed the terrifying disorder of everyday life, the dreaded smell of him and hers blended inside the TARDIS. He doesn’t know why she would have something similar, not if she remembers Berlin as he would, the way things are going. Maybe it’s precisely because that’s the kind of flowery skimpy attire River secretly enjoys, and that tonight was the first time she chose it.

Then, it physically grabbed him, _them_. He could not rationalise it or dismiss it. And he simply had to embrace.

Slices of emotions, impressions added up there, on the doorstep to her room. He felt with a sharp acuity how a whole chapter of his future was part of her _reality_. How he had fled a ghost while she was busy not fearing one. Not recoiling before what must have been in America, in Stonehenge, her _lover_ incomplete. And still, her room was smelling of him. For her, they kept having rounds of intimacy and defiance, depending on the amplitude of their lives asynchrony. He should have trodden carefully, answered her easiness around him with trust simply –spoilers be damned, he had always held in his hands the sole proof of her eternal loyalty. Yet, he had mindlessly lavished her with touches, like all his friends, oblivious to the fact they were a habit she probably dressed in every morning –him bopping her nose as she tried to powder it.

There _was_ powder on the vanity, on the bowtie left there.

To see him with a bow-tie un-powdered must have hurt. Will hurt. Must have scared her.

Was he her worst nightmare?

He understood a lot that time on the doorstep. Even if he had not experienced any of it, but in smells and glimpses.

She never needed to explain that room.

A faint whisper brings him back to the present. Now in her underwear, River is blowing on the gawking in her hand, particles of light and matter permeating and stitching. Like him.

_In so many ways._

He does not think twice and grabs the flimsy garb under his hand and the nearest pair of small masculine trousers he can find, knowing exactly what he is doing. He is about to commit a little act of rebellion and cruelty on her timeline, but he is not feeling generous. Not in the slightest. Not with what he is risking.

Puzzled, she stands up as he drops to his knees, his face just before her abdomen and orders her to step in.

“Come closer,” he whispers nevertheless.

He holds the trousers for her; as she slips in, he lets his fingers graze the skin and strings them up to her waist, feeling her hips roll inches from his chin, but his eyes are on hers.

She tenses. No snark this time.

He gets up to face her, to witness _this_ woman. All he can see is their dates; a semi-wrapped River is a novelty. Always ready, and exactly how he needed her when she was. He should savour this undone moment, can’t bring himself to without voyeuristic embarrassment.

She wears pink-ish girly knickers, with a thin ribbon artfully woven into the fabric. The fly is wide open as she stands before him, doll-like in her inertia, leaving an exacerbated rosy triangle drawn between the gaping dark trouser lapels. He swallows hard.

Maybe she was right in keeping him out when he was out of the hotel. Just like before her room full of spoilers, he is getting drunk. Little by little.

And not completely sure it is the poison.

Carefully, he curbs his desire to lean in and bite to shreds her delicate bra. He does not dare to encourage the gleam of lust concealed under her bemusement. She is confused about his intentions, as expected. It would be so easy to confess he wants her, but it is not what he is trying to do here.

She has a future with him, he a past with her and he intends to show her. Even if it means relinquishing that precise delicatessen of half-crazed psychopath surging with bio energy.

_Oi!_

He covers with his eyes every inch of her face, purposely avoiding her strung and alight body, because he has no claim to it yet. It’s a card he could play; his affection for River. She knows it and tricked him knowing it. It’s a _game_ for her. No question about how and why and when and it infuriates him to see her half-done.

She offers her body arching and stretching before him, while he passes the negligee over her head. She undershot a little her estimations in bra size and the structure, all fabric and ribbons, leaves nothing to the imagination.

He cannot help touching, using his own bio-energy to light and smooth the skin, and she plays a sharp keening sound. _God,_ he could be moulding her this instant.

To feel it in someone else could well be the most exhilarating experience, and sharing it is like scones and tea. He remembers Romana, and how everything had felt. The rush of adrenaline, courtesy of the Daleks, and her snug little body shining, dancing, being completely natural about it.

His fingers work like matches over River’s electric, electric dermis sparking the air around. Good old Wimshurst and his electrostatic generator would have been proud. Whether it is the lingering bio energy or his pending ache for her remains to be decided.

She shifts in an attempt to catch his body against hers, he stops her, hands set in the slope of her hips, thumbs fitting perfectly in the furrows of her groin. Blood and bio energy suddenly rush to very different areas of his body, leaving him white-scarred where they met, pure energy and vital fluid, mingling, eroding.

From afar he can hear screams, soon followed by two different cries of surprise and a loud metallic bang, as if a car crashed. He wonders if at last the hotel security is going to show up. He should probably worry.

For now, giddiness has built a little stack of snow bowls and keeps throwing them at him. The fun they could have together. Young Gallifreyans played around in the forty eight hours following regeneration. Romana was very cheeky about it, eventually forgave him for not joining the fun. He was already so old.

Back in Demon’s Run, he would have wanted River to grow a blue hand just for him, playing with her appearance the way Romana did. Jokes shared about a new set of teeth and toes, the exhilaration of changing and rediscovering the world around. Being there for her mainly, knowing that was something he was completely _competent_ at doing: being a Gallifreyan in the most physiological way. 

When he understood what she was, he fantasised he would have it _with her._

Yet the moment River’s face, her Library face, and hips and shoulders shouted themselves out of Mels’ throat he knew she would never change before him anymore.

River Song kept the time they could have been merrily Gallifreyan together and turned it into a one woman show. In that regard, he ought to applaud her.

Instead he caresses with energy and fingers only. He has her attention at last.

He would, in memory of the nights they run, all the nights he took her hand, he would cage his tiger of a desire, to fall for her lips; he knows better. By refusing her lips, he demonstrates before her eyes, crazy and green, the wonder that is River Song.

A woman he trusts with this kind of physical awareness.

He is drifting, he realises, in pain and dreams. Because, suddenly, he doesn’t know what she is doing, returning his pockets, grabbing his bum, stroking: a complete chaos of touches. _Clumsy._

Well, he once mistook the Rani for Mel. Regeneration, obviously.

“What is your view on champagne?” she breathes in his ear, almost sweet, and he shivers.

“River, we don’t have time for this. Someone’s bound to have heard...”

They waltz across the debris, the clothes, the chairs. And he lets her lead, not fighting her touch, not answering either. He needs to appear as naked and raw as she is, although it costs him.

This is a demonstration, he tells himself. Of how he could give her what she wants and allow her to trick him. But instead gives her what she needs. So he will mould her with his hands. Teach her. Or he might be a little very lost as to what to do with her. Or he might want to taste her before dying.

A lot of cables are being switched up there.

Relentless in her search for a weak point, she fiddles and nudges, hooks piercing; bites his collarbone through his shirt, leaving lipstick marks, and he manages to appear only gently baffled as she goes for his trousers, tearing the zipper open before shooting him a naughty look and settling for a slow dismantling of his shirt.

“What do you want, River?”

Her fingers work with an agonising care on each button, circling their shape with the flesh of her index before grazing the fabric with the nail. His trousers are gaping and she is intent on doing nothing about it. His breathing is so contained, the room so still, the soundless scraping shoots across his ears, thunderous, and the hiss escaping her lips. He drops his hearts to a hush, tries to recalibrate his vascular assignment.

This is a mess.

“I want you on the back of Jeff, that’s my motorcycle, and together we will raid Berlin.” She laughs like a child. “Right now, at every corner of every street you can find a head to put a bullet into. And History will approve. Probably. That’s the thing with History. It is written by _someone_.”

As she undresses him slowly, she says exactly what she is going to do with him. Although she knows perfectly well there is no time for their little trip or the body she promises to ride is no longer fit to even dampen her gilded skin.

She isn’t aware of it of course –and he knows only too well how telling it is about himself; what she is promising, adventures of kisses, is exactly the kind of time he will spend with her. The assurance it is a date she would choose anyway is like a balm, despite the pain, despite the pressure in his groin.

She talks about breaking and entering the Reichstag for a picnic on the rooftop and an improvised repainting of all the statues -in blue. Carriages and Rolls are mentioned, Apfelstrudel, and concealing fresh eggs into every officer’s cap, Cabaret, and saving the world. She goes on and on about a dress and he loses himself in the contemplation of her lips, opening and closing, rounding and stretching.

He starts when the words strike home and she is praising a curved knife for gutting.

She stops undressing him, as if the desire to hurt was at the moment prevailing over eating him whole.

He wants to cry a little. He just found her and wants nothing but to share what they shared during those last months, when he didn’t, but did search for Melody. He found River instead. _She_ wants nothing but to kill and he believes he lost for good the tender gaze she had on his lips, caressing, that cowardly time in Stormcage.

She is staging even her desire for him. His reaction to her is wrong. This is more revealing about his present state than any observation he could make about her smile, her touch, her thinking.

“I could show you the world.” She kisses his eyebrow. “All of time and space.” She kisses his jaw. “And so little explored.” She licks the dip between his collarbones. “I’m related to all the Earth and nothing that’s human,” she pauses taking time to bare teeth, scrape them gingerly in the tenderness of his chest. He nearly eats his tongue. ”Is foreign to me,” she concludes in a breath.

Echoes of an altercation between a voice he thinks he can recognise and two male ones suddenly ring through the corridors, coming from the lobby.

He cannot hold this any longer. She short-circuited his brain, because he is incapable of telling if he is utterly disgusted about everything she is, or if he wants to inhale her. So that she can complete her poisoning him and alters the very fabric of his mind. So he could be worse than her, so his response to her feels _right._

Nothing too foreign here.

They need to fall back to something he knows, some game he knows the rule of and this isn’t it. This is his turn to protect her from herself, as she never showed how much she hurt because she knew it would hurt him in the future. _Flirting_. They can’t do that. Too far gone. A part of him might completely fall for her trick –already has, again. He needs the reassurance of something they had been doing even before he trusted her. When he had no idea who she was and would do to him.

Answer to a call. _Date._

He is going to give her the date of a life time, the way to saving River.

The last word she ever uttered was “spoilers”. This is why they wear masks.

Following rules, they managed to make it work. She called, he came. Always.

Parades and games are absurd until you add rules.

Long ago, she told him he would have to trust her, with whatever he would throw at her as long as played by the books.

First move: a date.

“Back in a second.” And he stumbles out of the hall, scurrying to get his TARDIS.

“Why are you stopping... You can’t just go!”

She expects him to disappear obviously, to die alone. _He_ will put on a show for her.

They have the restaurant. He needs the suit. (River never needed any dress. She once showed up naked at a party. Well, it was a nudist party and River had failed to inform him but nevertheless. Oh. Scratch that, River needs dress, but that’s not mandatory with her.)

“I forgot to put the kettle on,” he shouts back. He waves a hand behind his head, praying for the indignation he is hearing in her voice not to morph into a range of bullet in his back. Or lower.

“Fine, whatever suits you. It’s your death after all. If you want to go and leave me here to die in peace, do as you wish. Now, where did I put my boots again?”

He hears her ruffle through chairs and tables as the comforting whirring of the TARDIS catches him, coming from the ladies’ room. He doesn’t question her presence here and steps in, avoiding a steady footwork he wishes not to be River’s.

But moments after, the first thing he hears, when he parks the TARDIS in the dining room, all dolled up and ready for a fight, is her screaming.

And then the play runs at full throttle, with deus and machina distinct, and the machina having swallowed the prota- and deuteragonist… Complicated.

And nothing is going as scripted

She is not River when she runs away, and she is not River when she watches him crawl, not doing anything.

It hurts, probably more than the poison.

But finding she is River in accepting a name as a challenge, and few trifle of words as a promise, he relaxes.

Maybe.

He feels ashamed of using his words and her future in such a manner. He is not hypocritical enough not to know that saving her would save him as well.

Shame and heart-break, he would not want to go like this anyway.

Her move.

_Impress me, undo death._

He is dying.

 

***

She hurts.

She hurt a lot. For a long time it seemed, for eternity. But it can’t have been, because the Doctor was still alive, and shouting, about her. About not harming her. They say to harm a child is the only unforgivable crime.

Well, they are all someone’s child.

It hurt for a long time and then she asked a question, she chose. _Something._ She still needs to remember.

She made a long-time new friend, someone. She still needs to put a face on her.

She rescued someone. Her parents probably, since they were the only ones she would bother to rescue.

She saved the Doctor.

And then she vanished. She knows she must have exhausted something. The nurse confirmed it. She felt it.

Exhaustion of oneself. In her case, all her selves.

She lost all the layers she didn’t know she had at once. She never suspected her sincerity in deceiving was built on that many masks. That many Melodys, and Mels’.

Her parents were there. The Doctor was there and something feels new inside her.

The seconds are so stupidly detached from one another that it takes her all her remaining strength to realise her parents just left the room and that they talked ages ago, but she stopped talking and they whispered something, touched something on her face –it _was_ her face- and left. And now someone is talking again.

 “...fore we go.”

Good.

That’s better than… Something. Emotions. Pain. The entire package. Not her creation.

She understands them quite clearly, words. She needs to focus.

“You did stop for me, back there when I was chasing you down the Spree river” It’s the Doctor’s voice.

Sounding as if he is offering some sort of justification.

That can’t be _right._

He is all furrows and wrinkles across the forehead, deep and long. And without her parents.

Don’t be wrinkled _,_ she thinks.

He really is talking to her though. About favours. They seem to happen a lot.

“Now you are returning the favour,” she manages to rasp. Her voice seems so alien to her. And she has to remember herself it is only natural it doesn’t sound like Mels’ brash intonation anymore. “How nice of you.”

She feels the need to whisper, because her new voice is rather low and she isn’t quite used to how it fills her mouth yet.

She talked quite a lot, earlier. He wouldn’t play, so she talked.

Is that how it works?

She hums.

Focusing on her voice helps her focusing on his voice, oddly, and she is sure she can actually sustain this conversation without falling asleep.

“I had to make sure you did not completely miss the point of what had just happened,” he confesses.

His fingers fidget. His head is held low, his voice lower. His frame appears taller and she can’t help but imagine this is where her lives went. Her vital energy helping him stand stronger, greater, mightier.

Perhaps he was a titan monster in her stories only because she made him.

Perhaps it was all completely lost, because the poison of the Judas tree is the strongest of all and Melody cannot undo death

But there was actually blood and people terrified and _that_ she can recall. It bothers her that it is the sole image she can fix for now. She cannot wait until it all comes back, because she chose _her_.

Something stings her eyes. For a second, she mistakes it for rage.

“You can come back when I manage to remember what _did_ happen,” she tartly answers.

“I intend to,” he purposefully adds, locking his eyes onto her. She doesn’t understand and he insists, patient. “That’s the point I’d like to make: I intend to come back.”

River arches an eyebrow, nodding imperceptibly, unconvinced as she takes in his countenance. The grave stillness in the hand at his hip. The creases on his face. There is guilt.

And something else. The hint of weariness in someone about to take in a most impossible task, but still looking forward to embrace it.

His steps guide him across the room to the window. She sees the blue book on her nightstand, the bright ribbon, but doesn’t say anything. She knows it must be from him because he sets his eyes on it with infinite tenderness. Her curiosity is prickled. She wonders what’s inside the book that might prompt such reaction.

A story he loved. A story he wrote. Rules, treaties, maps to where to find him?

 _How to avoid running into the man you fairly killed in ten lessons_?

A story of who she was, lead by whom, little pieces of information she lost but never recovered from before Leadworth?

New York was New York and Leadworth was Leadworth.

She can’t go back there. There are gazes her mother let linger on her that she will not forget before long. And that she needs time to forgive.

And there are decisions she made, this afternoon, decisions she is not completely sure she would make again.

He lets her alone with her thoughts, waiting patiently. Watching. The second she notices his patience, she stops thinking about blue books and starts pretending she is thinking, just to spy on his face.

He’s _pretty._

He waits for her to come out of her dreaming and simply nods. They exchange a glance, awkward, and he makes for the door, stopping just beside her bed.

“Just one last thing.”

Her hand twitches under the cover.

“Did you forget something?” Feeling a bit sentimental, she is almost wishing he would come back, lean in, and drop a kiss on her mouth. Her mouth until the end. She won’t have any other.

He emphatically lifts a lean finger, which surprisingly distracts her attention from his pretty lips. Something tells her he notices every second of her staring. Her pretending. Her drifting.

“Don’t wait up,” he carols, a smile blossoming on his face. It’s almost another apology and she has no idea why he needs to apologise when _she_ tried to kill him.

She scrunches her nose, amused.

“That was not my intention.”

He may be referring to her fixation, she may be referring to her tiredness. Or vice-versa. _Boy_ , that man was explosive and she might not survive another date.

“It could be at some point,” he simply says.

“That’s a bit rich. Should I offer you my hand for fortune reading?” Her hands won’t probably work properly before tomorrow. He chuckles and tousles the back of his head.

“As you said before: you waited a long time for this moment. And now it’s gone.” He pauses and squints, before resuming, infinitely sorry. “What will you do, Melody?”

It’s the first time he uses her proper name since she is in this body and she realises that strangely she doesn’t like it. “It’s time to stop waiting,” he adds.

His head bends, a strand of hair brushing his forehead and waving as he takes a timid first step toward the doors. He seems to be using his blood as fuel for this trip, and in a very old car. But the second step comes and he is not wavering anymore in his exit.

“Hey, wait,” she cries, incapable of sitting up, reaching out. “Will you at least tell me where and when I...”

The sound of his footsteps is lost to her, beyond the automatic doors.

“Am,” she finishes.

The room is white, excruciatingly so. There is nothing to tell her that she had not been brought to the world today.

Except her memories. And a blue book.

“Thank you for the challenge,” she whispers. “I guess.”

She almost says: “I’m sorry for killing you.”

It sounds wrong now. It could stop at some point.

 

**Author's Note:**

> At the beginning, the Let's Kill Hitler dialogue comes from _The Doctor Who Companion: The Eleventh Doctor: Volume Four - Let's Kill Hitler Original Script._
> 
> River's "I'm related to all the earth and nothing that's human is foreign to me." comes from the 1941's picture _The Shanghaï Gesture_.


End file.
